IMAGE: After analyzing white-deer remains from a
site in Panama occupied between 2,200 and 500 years ago, María Fernanda
Martínez-Polanco found some evidence of feasting signs....
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Credit: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
In pre-Columbian times, the white-tailed deer was among the most
abundant and frequently consumed mammals in Panama. It was also an icon,
represented on thousands of clay vessels. Through an analysis of deer
remains in refuse piles at the Sitio Sierra archaeological site,
researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI)
discovered signs of "feasting behavior" associated with this animal.
Their findings were published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.
Spanish conquistadors left some clues. They noted the abundance
of deer in indigenous communities along the Pacific coast near Sitio
Sierra and highlighted the existence of larders replete with dried and
salted deer carcasses. These details suggest that periodic feasts may
have taken place, and were likely important for enhancing social
relations and strengthening alliances.
The Sitio Sierra site, a large village on the Pacific coastal
plain occupied between 2,200 and 500 years ago, was excavated by STRI
archaeologist Richard Cooke in the 1970s. María Fernanda
Martínez-Polanco, a former pre-doctoral fellow in Cooke's lab at STRI
and first author of the study, analyzed some of the evidence of feasting
signs.
She found that, in certain units, remains of young white-tailed
deer predominated, as well as body parts with high meat values. Most of
the cut marks on the bones were due to de-fleshing, as opposed to rodent
or carnivore gnawing. She also encountered the carcasses of tasty birds
and mammals, a contrast from the typical food remains found around
houses, consisting of marine and river fish, iguanas and small turtles.
In those units, pottery sherds were much more numerous and larger
than in other contexts. A large pit with post-holes along the periphery
contrasted with smaller cooking pits found in or around the structures
of former houses. These findings coincide with characteristics of
feasting mentioned in the scientific literature.
"This was an important tradition that could have been practiced
for several generations, as we have witnessed based on the cut marks in
bones, located in identical positions over different time periods,"
Martínez-Polanco said.
For her, the analyses of deer bone samples in conjunction with
the evidence from the pottery and cooking practices, position the feasts
at Sitio Sierra as part of a ritual activity. Possible motivations for
feasting include ancestor worship, rites of passage, celebrations of
cultural awareness and group oral-history and political gatherings
designed to enhance the reputation of the provider.
Archaeologists think that Sitio Sierra was probably a low-status
village, based on burials in its two cemeteries, suggesting that these
feasts were likely not as sumptuous as they could have been in
higher-status villages in the area, such as Sitio Conte or El Caño.
Offering deer meat may have been considered a great honor for the guests
and proof of the provider's status.
"Deer were more than just food for Panamanian pre-Columbian
populations," Martínez-Polanco said. "Deer hunting was restricted and
their consumption linked to important occasions, as we observed in the
archaeological record of Sitio Sierra, allowing ancient Panamanians to
share and reinforce social relations at different levels of society."
IMAGE: This earpiece, perhaps of Egyptian manufacture, is apparent loot from the First Crusade sack of Jerusalem in July, 1099.
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Credit: Virginia Withers
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte-led archaeological dig
on Jerusalem's Mount Zion has been going on for over a decade, looking
at an area where there were no known ruins of major temples, churches or
palaces, but nonetheless sacred land where three millennia of struggle
and culture has long lain buried, evidence in layer upon layer of
significant historical events.
Virtually every dig season, a significant discovery has been
made at the site, adding real detail to the records of this
globally-renowned city, giving new insights to what has often been
imperfectly preserved in ancient histories. This year's findings are no
different, confirming previously unverified details from nearly
thousand-year-old historical accounts of the First Crusade - history
that had never been confirmed regarding the five-week siege, conquest,
sack and massacre of the Fatamid (Muslim)-controlled city in July of
1099.
The dig's archeological team --- co-directed by UNC Charlotte
professor of history Shimon Gibson, Rafi Lewis, a faculty member at the
University of Haifa and Ashkelon Academic College, and James Tabor, UNC
Charlotte professor emeritus of religious studies -- has revealed the
rumored, but never physically detected, moat-trench the Fatamid
defenders dug along the city's southern wall to protect against siege
engines - a defense that contemporary accounts claim helped stymie the
southern assault.
Through stratigraphic evidence, the archaeologists have been able
to confirm the 11th Century date of the 17-meter-wide by 4-meter-deep
ditch, which abutted the Fatimid city wall (built in the same place as
the current wall near the current Zion Gate), and have also found
artifacts from the assault itself, including arrowheads, Crusader bronze
cross pendants, and a spectacular piece of Muslim gold jewelry, which
is probable booty from the conquest.
In past seasons, the team found remnants of a Fatamid city gate
at the site, which, the archaeologists argue, makes the area a likely
focal point for the Crusaders' main southern assault on the city wall.
Despite reported attempts to fill the trench by the attacking forces,
the southern assault was ultimately unsuccessful. The city's defenses
were finally breached by a simultaneous operation from the north.
Near the trench, the archaeologists also unearthed an
earthquake-damaged Fatamid structure, which was probably already a ruin
at the time of the assault. The arrowheads, crosses and jewelry were
found on the floor of the structure.
"There was, apparently, an extramural quarter of scattered
buildings, outside the city to the south, and we excavated a building
that was in a ruinous state, possibly damaged by the earthquake of
1033," Gibson said. "You can imagine the Crusaders coming at and
attacking the city from the south and they find the ditch and this
ruined building, and they made use of it for cover, and that explains
some of the arrowheads because they would have been raining down upon
them" Gibson speculated.
"This is enormously important for Crusader scholarship," said
Lewis, an expert on medieval warfare, "because not only do we have the
remains of the ditch that we only knew about from the sources but we
also have the remains of the frontline battle itself."
The archaeology clarifies a historical picture that is mainly
only known from contemporary chroniclers who had been considered
questionable in their accuracy. By all accounts, the Crusader attack on
the city of Jerusalem was a bloody one and took place on two sides of
the city. While the principal forces broke into the city from the north,
little has been known about the attack from the south.
Peter Tudebode, a contemporary chronicler, recounts that the
Provencal forces led by Raymond de Saint Gille on the south side,
positioned themselves somewhere on Mount Zion and proceeded to attack
the wall. However, there was a ditch in front of the wall and they could
not get their wooden siege tower up against the wall, and so Raymond
asked his men, under cover of night, to fill in the ditch for payment of
gold dinars. Though the siege tower was able to proceed, the southern
assault still did not succeed because of the defenders aggressive
counter-measures.
Until the current find, however, there was no evidence that a
ditch, trench or moat ever existed, calling into question the reality of
the accounts of the southern assault.
The Mount Zion dig team's discovery of the trench came through a
puzzling observation made in earlier seasons at the site. "Just outside
the city wall we noticed that, although the slope of the hill went down
[from the wall], we found that the slope of a layer of fill was going in
the opposite direction, dipping down [towards the wall]," Gibson noted.
"That was our first clue - there was some feature that had been cut
into the ground, which had been filled in later."
The fill provided the dating that explained what the structure
was: "What was nice was that the ditch itself was sealed with a burnt
layer that had coins in it from the time of King Baldwin III," Gibson
said.
Baldwin III was an early crusader king who fought a civil war
against his mother, in the course of which he burnt much of Jerusalem.
Baldwin's fiery attack was known to be in 1153, about half a century
after the conquest, thus dating the ditch as a landscape feature in the
period before.
"The ditch got filled in and it disappeared - to such an extent
that a lot of archaeologists who had been working at different points in
time believed that maybe this ditch was a figment of the chroniclers'
imaginations," Gibson said. "That's why this discovery is so important -
for the first time, we can confirm details that appear in major
historical texts."
The artifacts associated with the find provide some intriguing
details about the historical moment of the First Crusade. In the ditch's
fill the archaeologists found what might be a part of a battle standard
made of metal, as well as pieces of Chinese celadon ware pottery,
which show active trade with the far east during the Fatamid period.
The jewelry, which includes fine gold workmanship with pearls and
colored beads, was found by staff archaeologists John Hutchins and
Melanie Samed, and they carefully extracted it from the ruined house,
where it had lain for 920 years. Gibson is fairly certain that it is
booty from the sack or carried by the soldiers carrying out the attack,
rather than a dropped domestic item, noting that looting was a real
interest of the crusaders.
"It's large and valuable, not something you would lose, you see, "
Gibson said. "This piece of jewelry may have been of Egyptian origin
and it seems to have been used as an attachment for the ear, and because
of its large size, perhaps also to hold a veil in position around a
women's head." The Fatamid dynasty came from Egypt, and the gold work is
a familiar Egyptian style of the period, with the use of gold and
pearls in jewelry mentioned in documents from the Cairo Genizah.
Details bringing the moment of conquest to life are particularly
important because the battle marks a critical moment in Jerusalem's
history. The crusaders takeover is one of several catastrophic moments
in Jerusalem's dramatic and violent history when the city was
essentially wiped out and re-colonized by its conquerors.
"For three days, or perhaps even a week, the crusaders
perpetrated every single atrocity under the sun - rape, pillage,
murder," Gibson said. "The chroniclers talk about 'rivers of blood'
running in the streets of the city, and it may not be an exaggeration.
Terrible crimes were committed, and a lot of people died, Christians
included. Local Christians were considered just as heretical as the
Muslims and the Jews. They turned Jerusalem into a ghost town."
It is expected that further analysis of the artifacts will reveal further insights.
IMAGE: UNM graduate student Paige Lynch conducting
excavations at Mayahak Cab Pek in May 2019, part of ongoing UNM
research into the earliest humans in the New World tropics.
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Credit: University of New Mexico
From the perspective of Central and South America, the peopling of
the New World was a complex process lasting thousands of years and
involving multiple waves of Pleistocene and early Holocene period
immigrants entering into the Neotropics.
Paleoindian colonists arrived in waves of immigrants entering the
Neotropics, a region starting in the humid rainforests of southern
Mexico before 13,000 years ago and brought with them technologies
developed for adaptation to environments and resources found in North
America.
As the ice age ended across the New World people adapted more
generalized stone tools to exploit changing environments and resources.
In the Neotropics these changes would have been pronounced as patchy
forests and grasslands gave way to broadleaf tropical forests.
In new research published recently in PLOS One titled
Linking late Paleoindian stone tool technlogies and populations in
North, Central and South America, scientists from The University of
NewMexico led a study in Belize to document the very earliest indigenous
stone tool tradition in southern Mesoamerica.
"This is an area of research for which we have very poor data
regarding early humans, though this UNM-led project is expanding our
knowledge of human behavior and relationships between people in North,
Central and South America," said lead author Keith Prufer, professor
from The University of New Mexico's Department of Anthropology.
This research, funded by grants from the National Science Foundation
and the Alphawood Foundation, focuses on understanding the Late
Pleistocene human colonization of tropics in the broad context of global
changes occurring at the end of the last ice age (ca. 12,000-10,000
years ago). The research suggests the tools are part of a human
adaptation story in response to emerging tropical conditions in what is
today called the Neotropics, a broad region south of the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec (in S Mexico).
As part of the research, the team conducted extensive excavations at
two rock shelter sites from 2014-2018. The excavation sites, located in
the Bladen Nature Research, are almost 30 miles from the nearest road
or modern human settlement in a large undisturbed rainforest that is one
of the best-protected wildlife refuges in Central America.
"We have identified and established an absolute chronology for the
earliest stone tool types that are indigenous to Central America," said
Prufer. "These have clear antecedents with the earliest known humans in
both South America and North America, but appear to show more affinity
with slightly younger Late Paleoindian toolkits in the Amazon and
Northern Peru than with North America."
The research represents the first endogenous Paleoindian stone tool
technocomplex recovered from well-dated stratigraphic contexts for
Mesoamerica. Previously designated, these artifacts share multiple
features with contemporary North and South American Paleoindian tool
types. Once hafted, these bifaces appear to have served multiple
functions for cutting, hooking, thrusting, or throwing.
"The tools were developed at a time of technological regionalization
reflecting the diverse demands of a period of pronounced environmental
change and population movement," said Prufer. "Combined stratigraphic,
technological, and population paleogenetic data suggests that there were
strong ties between lowland neotropic regions at the onset of the
Holocene."
These findings support previous UNM research suggesting strong
genetic relationships between early colonists in Central and South
America, following the initial dispersal of humans from Asia into the
Americas via the arctic prior to 14,000 years ago.
"We are partnering with Belizean conservation NGO Ya'axche
Conservation Trust in our fieldwork to promote the importance of ancient
cultural resources in biodiversity and protected areas management,"
said Prufer. "We spend a month every year camped out with no access to
electricity, internet, phone or resupplies while we conduct
excavations."
This field research involves several UNM graduate students in
Archaeology and Evolutionary Anthropology as well as collaborators at
Exeter University (UK) and Arizona State University. The analysis for
this study was done in part at UNM's Center for Stable Isotopes, as well
as with co-authors at Penn State and UC Santa Barbara. At UNM this
involved the new radiocarbon preparation laboratories which are part of
the Center for Stable isotopes, one of the anchors of UNM's
interdisciplinary PAIS research and teaching facility.
The senior co-authors are world leaders in the study of early humans
in the tropics and are committed to conservation efforts of cultural
resources and regional biodiversity. Additionally, Prufer's long-term
collaboration in indigenous Maya communities in the region was critical
to the success of this project.
"This research suggests that further exploration of links between
early humans living in the neotropics are needed to better understand
how knowledge and technologies were shared, and will contribute to our
understanding of processes that eventually led to the development of
agriculture and sedentary communities," said Prufer. "Further studies on
how these tools were used for food processing will be a key aspect of
this research."
IMAGE: Reconstruction of a Mesolithic camp-site with a hunter in the front ready to fire an arrow mounted with stone microliths.
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Credit: Ulco Glimmerveen
The development of new hunting projectiles by European
hunter-gatherers during the Mesolithic may have been linked to
territoriality in a rapidly-changing climate, according to a study
published July 17, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Philippe Crombé from Ghent University, Belgium.
As a result of warming occurring at a rate of ca. 1.5 to 2°C per
century, hunter-gatherers in Europe during the Mesolithic era
(approximately 11,000-6,000 years ago) experienced significant
environmental changes, very similar to the ones we face today: rising
sea levels, increased drought, plant and animal migrations and
wildfires. Here, Crombé examined microliths, small stone
arrowheads/barbs used in hunting, to see how their design and usage by
Mesolithic hunter-gatherers shifted in conjunction with climatic and
environmental changes.
Building on archaeological research from the last two decades,
Crombé used Bayesian modelling to reveal potential correlations between
228 radiocarbon dates specific to Mesolithic sites along the southern
North Sea basin and the different types and shapes of microliths
(triangles, crescents, leaf-shaped and mistletoe-shaped microliths,
trapezes, etc.) found at these sites.
The new model showed that variation in microlith shapes is much more
complex than previously believed, with frequent co-existence between
shapes. Crombé hypothesizes in this study that these different shapes of
stone microliths were mainly developed as a means to differentiate
between different groups living along the North Sea basin (previous
research has suggested there were two different, geographically-distinct
cultures in this region). As sea levels rose and former occupants of
the North Sea basin were forced to new areas, increased resource
competition and stress might have increased territoriality, including
the use of such symbols of group membership.
Developments in microlith shape also appear linked to short (1 to 2
centuries) but abrupt climactic events (which themselves would have been
tied to increasing environmental and demographic change):
triangle-shaped microliths were introduced after an abrupt cooling event
in the Early Mesolithic associated with erosion and wildfires; a
similar climate event 1,000 years later coincided with the appearance of
small backed bladelets and invasively retouched microliths, and an even
newer trapeze-shaped arrowhead replaced these older microliths at the
same time as a third cooling and drought-causing event another 1,000
years later.
More research is needed, but Crombé suggests that a holistic
approach can help determine whether these climatic and environmental
changes also affected other aspects of Mesolithic behavior.
Crombé adds: "In response to rapid climate warming some 11,500 years
ago, hunter-gatherers along the southern North Sea (NW Europe) faced
similar environmental changes as we encounter today, such as rapid sea
level rise, increased drought and wildfires and migration of people,
plants and animals. By studying the hunting equipment, this paper
investigates how these hunter-gatherers coped with these changes."
Archaeologists have known about this location, called the Motza site,
for decades. However, now that the government plans to build a new
highway entrance and new roundabouts there, the Israel Antiquities
Authority sent a team to do a full-scale excavation of the Neolithic
settlement, Vardi told Live Science. This effort quickly became the
largest excavation of a Neolithic site in the country, he said.
During the Neolithic, hunter-gatherer groups began farming and making
permanent settlements. So, it came as no surprise when they found large
buildings with rooms where Neolithic people
once lived, public facilities and places for rituals. Alleyways ran
between the buildings, showing that the settlement had an advanced
layout. Some buildings even had plaster floors.
The team also uncovered human burials beneath and around the houses.
Some of the burials also held burial goods, likely offerings that may
have been given to help the deceased in the afterlife. Some of these
grave goods came from far away — including obsidian beads from Anatolia
(modern-day Turkey) and seashells from the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea
— indicating that the people at this site traded with neighboring
regions.
The excavation also uncovered several stone and mother-of-pearl
bracelets, which, given their small size, were likely worn by children
or adolescents, Vardi said. He added that one burial showed that these
bracelets were worn on the upper arm.
The site also has thousands of stone arrowheads for hunting, axes for
felling trees, and sickle blades and knives, as well as figurines whose
styles date to the Neolithic. Radiocarbon dating of the seeds found at
the site indicates that people lived there between 9,000 and 8,800 years
ago, Vardi said. In addition to farming crops and keeping goats,
these people kept cows and pigs; they also hunted game, such as
gazelle, deer, wolves and foxes, as shown by animal remains found there.
"Based on the data that we have and from the fauna, we have a pretty
good notion that the people at the site were farmers and they were
specialists in what they did," Vardi said.
After the Neolithic period ended, people continued to live there. It's
clear why this spot was so desirable, Vardi said, as it's near a large
spring and several smaller springs that supply fresh wate
IMAGE: Australopithecus africanus impression by Jose Garcia and Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Southern Cross University.
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Credit: Jose Garcia and Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Southern Cross University.
New research brings to light for the first time the evolution of
maternal roles and parenting responsibilities in one of our oldest
evolutionary ancestors
Australopithecus africanus mothers breastfed their
infants for the first 12 months after birth, and continued to supplement
their diets with breastmilk during periods of food shortage
Tooth chemistry analyses enable scientists to 'read' more than two-million-year-old teeth
Finding demonstrates why early human ancestors had fewer offspring and extended parenting role
Extended parental care is considered one of the hallmarks of human evolution. A stunning new research result published today in Nature reveals for the first time the parenting habits of one of our earliest extinct ancestors.
Analysis of more than two-million-year-old teeth from Australopithecus africanus
fossils found in South Africa have revealed that infants were breastfed
continuously from birth to about one year of age. Nursing appears to
continue in a cyclical pattern in the early years for infants; seasonal
changes and food shortages caused the mother to supplement gathered
foods with breastmilk. An international research team led by Dr Renaud
Joannes-Boyau of Southern Cross University, and by Dr Luca Fiorenza and
Dr Justin W. Adams from Monash University, published the details of
their research into the species in Nature today.
"For the first time, we gained new insight into the way our
ancestors raised their young, and how mothers had to supplement solid
food intake with breastmilk when resources were scarce," said geochemist
Dr Joannes-Boyau from the Geoarchaeology and Archaeometry Research
Group (GARG) at Southern Cross University.
"These finds suggest for the first time the existence of a
long-lasting mother-infant bond in Australopithecus. This makes us to
rethink on the social organisations among our earliest ancestors," said
Dr Fiorenza, who is an expert in the evolution of human diet at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI).
"Fundamentally, our discovery of a reliance by Australopithecus africanus
mothers to provide nutritional supplementation for their offspring and
use of fallback resources highlights the survival challenges that
populations of early human ancestors faced in the past environments of
South Africa," said Dr Adams, an expert in hominin palaeoecology and
South African sites at the Monash BDI.
For decades there has been speculation about how early ancestors
raised their offspring. With this study, the research team has opened a
new window into our enigmatic evolutionary history. Australopithecus africanus lived from about two to three
million years ago during a period of major climatic and ecological
change in South Africa, and the species was characterised by a
combination of human-like and retained ape-like traits. While the first
fossils of Australopithecus were found almost a century ago, scientists
have only now been able to unlock the secrets of how they raised their
young, using specialised laser sampling techniques to vaporise
microscopic portions on the surface of the tooth. The gas containing the
sample is then analysed for chemical signatures with a mass
spectrometer- enabling researchers to develop microscopic geochemical
maps which can tell the story of the diet and health of an individual
over time. Dr Joannes-Boyau conducted the analyses at the Geoarchaeology and Archaeometry Research Group at Southern Cross University in Lismore NSW and at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
Teeth grow similarly to trees; they form by adding layer after layer
of enamel and dentine tissues every day. Thus, teeth are particularly
valuable for reconstructing the biological events occurring during the
early period of life of an individual, simply because they preserve
precise temporal changes and chemical records of key elements
incorporated in the food we eat.
By developing micro geochemical maps, we are able to 'read'
successive bands of daily signal in teeth, which provide insights into
food consumption and stages of life. Previously the team had revealed
the nursing behaviour of our closest evolutionary relatives, the Neanderthals.
With this latest study, the international team has analysed teeth that
are more than ten times older than those of Neanderthals.
"We can tell from the repetitive bands that appear as the tooth
developed that the fall back food was high in lithium, which is believed
to be a mechanism to reduce protein deficiency in infants more prone to
adverse effect during growth periods," Dr Joannes-Boyau said.
"This likely reduced the potential number of offspring, because of
the length of time infants relied on a supply of breastmilk. The strong
bond between mothers and offspring for a number of years has
implications for group dynamics, the social structure of the species,
relationships between mother and infant and the priority that had to be
placed on maintaining access to reliable food supplies," he said.
"This finding underscores the diversity, variability and flexibility
in habitats and adaptive strategies these australopiths used to obtain
food, avoid predators, and raise their offspring," Dr Adams emphasised.
"This is the first direct proof of maternal roles of one of our
earliest ancestors and contributes to our understanding of the history
of family dynamics and childhood," concluded Dr Fiorenza.
The team will now work on species that have evolved since, to
develop the first comprehensive record of how infants were raised
throughout history.
Researchers successfully reconstructed anthropic influences on
sedimentation, including dredging and canal gates use, in the ancient
harbour of Portus - a complex of harbour basins and canals that formed
the hub of commerce in the capital of the Roman Empire.
The findings suggest that the Romans were proactively managing their
river systems from earlier than previously thought - as early as the
2nd century AD.
The history was reconstructed using a range of high-resolution
sediment analysis including piston coring, x-ray scanning, radiocarbon
dating, magnetic and physical properties and mineral composition of the
ancient harbour sediments.
La Trobe University Archaeology Research Fellow and marine
geologist, Dr Agathe Lisé-Pronovost, said that ancient harbours can
accumulate sediments more rapidly than natural environments, which is
the case of Portus built in a river delta and where sediment accumulated
at a rate of about one meter per century. Applying these methods
allowed researchers to date and precisely reconstruct the sequence of
events of the historical port, including dredging to maintain enough
draught and canal gate use.
"Dating ancient harbour sediments is a major challenge, given ports
are not only subjected to weather events throughout history, but the
lasting effects of human activity," Dr Lisé-Pronovost said.
"The methods we've applied have allowed us to address the dating
issue and routine measurements of the sort could greatly improve
chronostratigraphic analysis and water depth reconstruction of ancient
harbour deposits."
Dr Lisé-Pronovost and her team encourage geoarchaeologists to implement these innovative methods to their work.
Genetic analysis has revealed that the ancestors of modern humans
interbred with at least five different archaic human groups as they
moved out of Africa and across Eurasia.
While two of the archaic groups are currently known - the
Neandertals and their sister group the Denisovans from Asia ¬- the
others remain unnamed and have only been detected as traces of DNA
surviving in different modern populations. Island Southeast Asia appears
to have been a particular hotbed of diversity.
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS),
researchers from the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for
Ancient DNA (ACAD) have mapped the location of past "mixing events"
(analysed from existing scientific literature) by contrasting the levels
of archaic ancestry in the genomes of present-day populations around
the world.
"Each of us carry within ourselves the genetic traces of these past
mixing events," says first author Dr João Teixeira, Australian Research
Council Research Associate, ACAD, at the University of Adelaide. "These
archaic groups were widespread and genetically diverse, and they survive
in each of us. Their story is an integral part of how we came to be.
"For example, all present-day populations show about 2% of
Neandertal ancestry which means that Neandertal mixing with the
ancestors of modern humans occurred soon after they left Africa,
probably around 50,000 to 55,000 years ago somewhere in the Middle
East."
But as the ancestors of modern humans travelled further east they
met and mixed with at least four other groups of archaic humans.
"Island Southeast Asia was already a crowded place when what we call
modern humans first reached the region just before 50,000 years ago,"
says Dr Teixeira. "At least three other archaic human groups appear to
have occupied the area, and the ancestors of modern humans mixed with
them before the archaic humans became extinct."
Using additional information from reconstructed migration routes and
fossil vegetation records, the researchers have proposed there was a
mixing event in the vicinity of southern Asia between the modern humans
and a group they have named "Extinct Hominin 1".
Other interbreeding occurred with groups in East Asia, in the
Philippines, the Sunda shelf (the continental shelf that used to connect
Java, Borneo and Sumatra to mainland East Asia), and possibly near
Flores in Indonesia, with another group they have named "Extinct Hominin
2".
"We knew the story out of Africa wasn't a simple one, but it seems
to be far more complex than we have contemplated," says Dr Teixeira.
"The Island Southeast Asia region was clearly occupied by several
archaic human groups, probably living in relative isolation from each
other for hundreds of thousands of years before the ancestors of modern
humans arrived.
"The timing also makes it look like the arrival of modern humans was
followed quickly by the demise of the archaic human groups in each
area."
IMAGE: A zebu-shaped weight from Tel Beth-Shemesh.
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Credit: A. Hay, courtesy of the Tel Beth-Shemesh Excavations exhibition.
The keeping of livestock began in the Ancient Near East and
underpinned the emergence of complex economies and then cities.
Subsequently, it is there that the world's first empires rose and fell.
Now, ancient DNA has revealed how the prehistory of the region's largest
domestic animal, the cow, chimes with these events.
An international team of geneticists, led by those from Trinity
College Dublin, have deciphered early bovine prehistory by sequencing 67
ancient genomes from both wild and domestic cattle sampled from across
eight millennia.
"This allowed us to look directly into the past and observe genomic
changes occurring in time and space, without having to rely on modern
cattle genetic variation to infer past population events," said
Postdpoctoral Researcher at Trinity,Marta Verdugo, who is first author
of the article that has just been published in leading international
journal, Science.
The earliest cattle are Bos taurus, with no ancestry from Bos
indicus, or zebu - herds which were from a different origin in the Indus
Valley.
"However, a dramatic change occurred around 4,000 years ago when we
detect a widespread, wholesale influx of zebu genetics from the east,"
added Verdugo.
The rapid influx that occurred at this point - despite Near Eastern
Bos taurus and zebu having coexisted for previous millennia - may be
linked to a dramatic multi-century drought that was experienced across
the greater Near East, referred to as the 4.2-thousand years ago climate
event. At this time the world's first empires in Mesopotamia and Egypt
collapsed and breeding with arid-adapted zebu bulls may have been a
response to changing climate by ancient herders.
Professor of Population Genetics at Trinity, Dan Bradley, said:
"This was the beginning of the great zebu diaspora that continues to the
present day - descendants of ancient Indus Valley cattle are herded in
each continental tropics region today."
Sequencing Near Eastern wild cattle, or aurochs, also allowed the
team to unpick the domestication of this most formidable of beasts.
Whereas their similarity to the early cattle of Anatolia concurs with a
primary origin there, it is clear that different local wild populations
also made significant additional genetic contributions to herds in
Southeast Europe and also in the southern Levant, adding to the
distinctive make up of both European and African populations today.
"There is a great power in ancient genomics to uncover new, unforeseen tales from our ancient history," added Professor Bradley.
Chaco Canyon, a site that was once central to the lives of
pre-colonial peoples called Anasazi, may not have been able to produce
enough food to sustain thousands of residents, according to new
research. The results could shed doubt on estimates of how many people
were able to live in the region year-round.
Located in Chaco Culture National Historic Park in New Mexico, Chaco
Canyon hosts numerous small dwellings and a handful of multi-story
buildings known as great houses. Based on these structures, researchers
think that it was once a bustling metropolis that was home to as many as
2,300 people during its height from 1050 to 1130 AD.
But Chaco also sits in an unforgiving environment, complete with
cold winters, blazing-hot summers and little rainfall falling in either
season.
"You have this place in the middle of the San Juan Basin, which is
not very habitable," said Larry Benson, an adjoint curator at the CU
Museum of Natural History.
Benson and his colleagues recently discovered one more wrinkle in
the question of the region's suitability. The team conducted a detailed
analysis of the Chaco Canyon's climate and hydrology and found that its
soil could not have supported the farming necessary to feed such a
booming population.
The findings, Benson said, may change how researchers view the economy and culture of this important area.
"You can't do any dryland farming there," Benson said. "There's just not enough rain."
Today, Chaco Canyon receives only about nine inches of rain every
year and historical data from tree rings suggest that the climate wasn't
much wetter in the past.
Benson, a retired geochemist and paleoclimatologist who spent most
of his career working for the U.S. Geological Survey, set out to better
understand if such conditions might have limited how many people could
live in the canyon. In the recent study, he and Ohio State University
archaeologist Deanna Grimstead pulled together a wide range of data to
explore where Chaco Canyon residents might, conceivably, have grown
maize, a staple food for most ancestral Pueblo peoples.
They found that these pre-colonial farmers not only contended with
scarce rain, but also destructive flash floods that swept down the
canyon's valley floor.
"If you're lucky enough to have a spring flow that wets the ground
ahead of planting, about three-quarters of the time you'd get a summer
flow that destroys your crops," Benson said.
The team calculated that Chacoans could have, at most, farmed just
100 acres of the Chaco Canyon floor. Even if they farmed all of the
surrounding side valleys--a monumental feat--they would still have only
produced enough corn to feed just over 1,000 people.
The researchers also went one step further, assessing whether past
Chaco residents could have supplemented this nutritional shortfall with
wild game like deer and rabbits. They calculated that supplying the
185,000 pounds of protein needed by 2,300 people would have quickly
cleared all small mammals from the area.
In short, there would have been a lot of hungry mouths in Chaco
Canyon. Benson and Grimstead published their results this summer in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
For Benson, that leaves two possibilities. Chaco Canyon residents
either imported most of their food from surrounding regions 60 to 100
miles away, or the dwellings in the canyon were never permanently
occupied, instead serving as temporary shelters for people making
regular pilgrimages.
Either scenario would entail a massive movement of people and goods.
Benson estimates that importing enough maize and meat to feed 2,300
people would have required porters to make as many as 18,000 trips in
and out of Chaco Canyon, all on foot.
"Whether people are bringing in maize to feed 2,300 residents, or if
several thousand visitors are bringing in their own maize to eat,
they're not obtaining it from Chaco Canyon," Benson said.
Archaeologists in southern Israel have discovered an ancient biblical city from the time of King David.
The
site was discovered near the modern city of Kiryat Gat by researchers
from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Macquarie University in
Australia and the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The
Philistine ancient city of Ziklag is mentioned multiple times in the
Bible in relation to David, the researchers note, citing 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel.
“According to the Biblical narrative, Achish, King of Gat, allowed
David to find refuge in Ziklag while fleeing King Saul and from there
David also departed to be anointed King in Hebron,” they explain in a
statement.
Some
12 other sites in Israel have been considered as the possible location
of Ziklag, although experts note that none of the sites has a continuous
Philistine settlement and a settlement from the time of King David. The
site near Kiryat Gat, however, meets both criteria.
Part of the excavation site. (Israel Antiquities Authority/The Hebrew University in Jerusalem)
Excavations at the site began in 2015.
“Evidence of a settlement from the Philistine era has been found there,
from the 12-11th centuries BC,” explain the researchers. “Spacious,
massive stone structures have been uncovered containing finds typical of
the Philistine civilization.”
Other discoveries include bowls
and an oil lamp, which were offerings laid beneath the building’s floors
for good luck. Stone and metal tools were also found at the site.
“Above
the remains of the Philistine settlement was a rural settlement from
the time of King David, from the early 10th century BC,” the researchers
added. “This settlement came to an end in an intense fire that
destroyed the buildings.”
1 Samuel 30 describes how the Amalekites, ancient desert nomads, burnt Ziklag.
Pottery jars uncovered at the site. (Israel Antiquities Authority/The Hebrew University in Jerusalem)
The archaeologists found nearly 100 complete
pottery vessels in the ancient city. These are almost identical to
pottery vessels found in the fortified Judaean city of Khirbet Qeiyafa,
which have been carbon-dated to the time of King David.
“The great
range of complete vessels is testimony to the interesting everyday life
during the reign of King David,” the researchers said in the statement.
“Large quantities of storage jars were found during the excavation-
medium and large-which were used for storing oil and wine.”
Jugs and bowls decorated in a style typical of King David’s time were also uncovered.
Aerial stills of the excavation site. (Emil Aljem, Israel Antiquities Authority)
In another project, archaeologists in Israel’s Golan Heights recently discovered an ancient city gate from the time of King David.
Last year, researchers uncovered
an ancient site at Tel ‘Eton in the Judean foothills that may offer
fresh insight into the biblical kingdom of David and Solomon. The
kingdom is described in the Hebrew Bible but has long divided
historians.
While
some experts believe that it existed in the 10th century B.C., others
have questioned its existence, citing a lack of evidence of royal
construction at the center of the region where the kingdom is said to
have existed.
Carbon 14 dating supports the archaeologists' identification
For decades scholars sought the elusive site of Ziklag, where the Bible says David was given shelter by Philistine King Achish
Volunteers
excavate pottery from Khirbet a-Ra'i, which archaeologists have
identified as biblical Ziklag. (Excavation expedition to Khirbet a-Ra‘i)
In a finding sure to inflame the debate about the historicity of
the biblical King David, an international team of archaeologists claims
to have identified the lost city of Ziklag.
Based on artifacts and carbon 14 dating results of excavations
since 2015, scholars proposed Monday that the archaeological site of
Khirbet a-Ra‘i in the Judaean foothills is the site of the elusive
Philistine town.
As attested in the books of Samuel, Ziklag, located between Kiryat
Gat and Lachish, provided refuge to the future king David when he was on
the run from King Saul. After his sojourn in Ziklag, David ascended the
throne in Hebron.
According to a joint press release from the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem and the Israel Antiquities Authority, archaeologists
discovered remains of a Philistine settlement from the 12-11th centuries
BCE, which was followed by a rural settlement dating to the early 10th
century BCE, which is in keeping with the biblical account. Carbon 14
dating supports the archaeologists’ timeline and identification,
according to the press release.
A volunteer excavates pottery from
Khirbet a-Ra’i, which archaeologists have identified as biblical Ziklag.
(Excavation expedition to Khirbet a-Ra‘i)
As recorded in the Hebrew Bible, David settled at Ziklag for 14
months under the patronage of the Philistine King Achish of Gat, with
600 of his men and their families, and used it as a base to raid
neighboring peoples.
While the then-Philistine vassal David attempted to join the army of
his Philistine lord Achish to defeat Saul, retaliating Amalekites razed
the town and took off with the Israelites’ women and children, along
with much booty. (Spoiler: In the end, David prevailed.)
According to the press release, in addition to the cultural
transition between Philistine buildings and the presumed later Israelite
camp, the Davidic-era settlement shows remains of an intense fire that
destroyed it.
Later in the Hebrew Bible, in the Book of Nehemiah, the town is mentioned again as a base for Jews who returned from Babylon.
A volunteer excavates at Khirbet a-Ra’i,
which archaeologists have identified as biblical Ziklag. (Excavation
expedition to Khirbet a-Ra‘i)
For decades, archaeologists have sought the location of the elusive
Ziklag, for which roughly a dozen sites have been suggested, without
scholarly consensus. Those previous sites were largely dismissed due to
lack of signs of settlement transitioning from Philistine cultural
evidence to Israelite remains from the time of David, or due to lack of
evidence of the widespread ruin wrought by the Amalekites, as described
in the Hebrew Bible.
According to leading archaeologists Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, head of
the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; the
IAA’s Saar Ganor; and Dr. Kyle Keimer and Dr. Gil Davis of Macquarie
University in Sydney, Australia, the proposed site of Khirbet a-Ra‘i has
all the required qualifications.
The joint IAA and Hebrew University press release said that after
seven dig seasons that uncovered some 1,000 sq.m., the archaeological
team found evidence of a Philistine-era settlement from the 12-11th
centuries BCE, among which were massive stone structures and typical
Philistine cultural artifacts, including stylized pottery in foundation
deposits — good luck offerings laid beneath a building’s flooring.
Those artifacts, along with stone and metal tools, are similar to
ones found in other Philistine cities, including Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron
and Gath.
Pottery assemblage from Khirbet a-Ra’i,
which archaeologists have identified as biblical Ziklag. (Excavation
expedition to Khirbet a-Ra‘i)
The name Ziklag is of Philistine origin and does not have roots in Semitic languages. Recently, a large scientific study of Philistine DNA matched their origins to the Aegean region,
which had similar pottery styles during the 12th century BCE, the time
period in which the Philistine ancestors are thought to have migrated to
the Land of Israel.
At Khirbet a-Ra‘i to date, archaeologists have uncovered some 100
complete pottery vessels used for storing wine and oil, among other
uses. According to Garfinkel, who led excavations at the contemporary
fortified Judaean city of Sha‘arayim (Khirbet Qeiyafa), jugs and bowls
decorated with a “red slipped and hand-burnished” finish are typical of
the period of King David.
IMAGE: The three-rooted lower molar anomaly in a
recent Asian individual. Left: tooth sockets showing position of
accessory root; right: three-rooted lower first molar tooth.
view more
Credit: Christine Lee
An analysis of a 160,000-year-old archaic human molar fossil
discovered in China offers the first morphological evidence of
interbreeding between archaic humans and Homo sapiens in Asia.
The study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
centers on a three-rooted lower molar--a rare trait primarily found in
modern Asians--that was previously thought to have evolved after H. sapiens dispersed from Africa.
The new research points to a different evolutionary path.
"The trait's presence in the fossil suggests both that it is older
than previously understood and that some modern Asian groups obtained
the trait through interbreeding with a sister group of Neanderthals, the
Densiovans," explains Shara Bailey, a professor of anthropology at New
York University and the paper's lead author.
In a previous study, published in Nature, Bailey and her colleagues
concluded that the Denisovans occupied the Tibetan Plateau long before Homo sapiens arrived in the region.
That work, along with the new PNAS analysis, focused on a hominin lower mandible found on the Tibetan Plateau in Baishiya Karst Cave in Xiahe, China in 1980.
The PNAS study, which also included NYU anthropologist
Susan Antón and Jean-Jacques Hublin, director of the Department of Human
Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology,
centered on the molar, with the aim of understanding the relationship
between archaic humans who occupied Asia more than 160,000 years ago and
modern Asians.
"In Asia, there have long been claims for continuity between archaic
and modern humans because of some shared traits," observes Bailey. "But
many of those traits are primitive or are not unique to Asians.
However, the three-rooted lower molar trait is unique to Asian groups.
Its presence in a 160,000-year-old archaic human in Asia strongly
suggests the trait was transferred to H. sapiens in the region through interbreeding with archaic humans in Asia."
Full mosaic depicting Jonah being swallowed by a giant fish in the ancient Huqoq synagogue.
In an excavation led by Professor Jodi Magness of the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a 1,600-year-old biblical triptych of
mosaics made of small stone cubes (or tesserae) was found in a synagogue
in the ancient Galilean village of Huqoq in Israel.
“We’ve uncovered the first depiction of the episode of Elim ever found in ancient Jewish art,” said Dr. Magness.
This comes on the heels of earlier mosaic discoveries at this site
which include depictions of The Tower of Babel, Jonah, and the Giant
Fish, and the Parting of the Red Sea.
Dr. Magness together with a team of researchers and students
uncovered the first ancient Jewish depiction of the Elim episode from
the Book of Exodus.
The mosaic depicts the experience of the Israelites camping at Elim
after leaving Egypt and wandering in the wilderness without water, which
is described in Exodus 15:27.
The 15th chapter and 27th verse describe the site of Elim in which exiled Egyptians sought refuge after exhaustive travel.
The parting of the Red Sea mosaic in the ancient Huqoq synagogue.
Magness said that the Elim panel “is interesting as it is generally
considered a fairly minor episode in the Israelites’ desert wanderings,
which raises the question of why it was significant to this Jewish
congregation in Lower Galilee.”
A mosaic depicting the building of the Tower of Babel in the ancient Huqoq synagogue.
Dr. Magness told the Jewish Press, “The mosaic is divided into three
horizontal strips or registers. We see clusters of dates being harvested
by male agricultural workers wearing loincloths, who are sliding the
dates down ropes held by other men.
The middle register shows a row of wells alternating with date palms.
On the left side of the panel, a man in a short tunic is carrying a
water jar and entering the arched gate of a city flanked by crenelated
towers. An inscription above the gate reads, ‘And they came to Elim.’ ”
A detail from the newly-discovered Elim mosaic.Another important discovery: “Chapter 7 in the book of Daniel
describes four beasts which represent the four kingdoms leading up to
the end of days,” Dr. Magness said.
“This year our team discovered mosaics in the synagogue’s north aisle
depicting these four beasts, as indicated by a fragmentary Aramaic
inscription referring to the first beast: a lion with eagle’s wings.
The lion itself is not preserved, nor is the third beast. However,
the second beast from Daniel 7:4 – a bear with three ribs protruding
from its mouth – is preserved. So is most of the fourth beast, which is described in Daniel 7:7 as having iron teeth.”
The question of how to best adapt to extreme climate is a critical
issue facing modern societies worldwide. In "The Role of Diet in
Resilience and Vulnerability to Climate Change among Early Agricultural
Communities in the Maya Lowlands," published in Current Anthropology,
authors Claire Ebert, Julie Hoggarth, Jaime Awe, Brendan Culleton, and
Douglas Kennett examine the role of diet in the ability of the ancient
Maya to withstand periods of severe climatic stress. The authors found
that an increase in the elite Maya's preference for a maize-based diet
may have made the population more vulnerable to drought, contributing to
its societal collapse.
"Population expansion and anthropogenic environment degradation from
agricultural intensification, coupled with socially conditioned food
preferences, resulted in a less flexible and less resilient system,"
Ebert writes. "Understanding the factors promoting resilience in the
past can help mitigate the potential for similar sudden and dramatic
shifts in our increasingly interconnected modern world."
The study was conducted using the remains of 50 human burials from
the ancient Maya community of Cahal Pech, Belize. Using AMS radiocarbon
dating, Ebert and collaborators determined the age of the human burials
found at Cahal Pech, both from the site core and surrounding
settlements. These burials dated as early as the Middle Preclassic
Period, between 735-400 B.C., and as late as the Terminal Classic,
between approximately 800-850 A.D.
At the Human Paleoecology and Isotope Geochemistry Laboratory at
Penn State University, Ebert measured stable carbon and nitrogen isotope
values of the bone collagen in the burials to determine characteristics
of individual diets and how they changed through time. Of particular
interest was the increasing proportion of C4 plants in the diet, which
includes the Maya staple crop maize.
For the burials dating to the Preclassic and Early Classic periods,
representing the early inhabitants of the Cahal Pech, Ebert's results
suggest that both elites and commoners had a diverse diet that, in
addition to maize, included wild plants and animals procured through
hunting. Ebert suggests that this diversity of food provided a buffer
when a multi-century drought impacted the May lowlands between 300-100
B.C. "The resilience of complex social systems at Cahal Pech from the
Preclassic through Early Classic was dependent in part upon a broad
subsistence strategy that helped to absorb shocks to maize-based food
production in the context of drought," Ebert writes.
Things took a turn at during the Terminal Classic period, between
750 and 900 A.D., when growing social hierarchies and population
expansion led to the intensifying of agricultural production and
increasing reliance on maize. During this time frame, Ebert found that
humans from surrounding settlements at Cahal Pech had different carbon
values than the site's center, where the elite class lived. "Our results
show a pattern of highly restricted stable nitrogen and carbon isotopes
for elite individuals in the Late and Terminal Classic, which
corresponds to a hyper-specialized maize-based diet that persisted
through the final abandonment of the site," Ebert writes. Elite demands
on the local population for increased maize production, and a preference
for this drought-intolerant crop, was likely a factor that contributed
to the failure of the Cahal Pech socio-political system in the face of
another severe drought at the end of the Terminal Classic Period.
"The study speaks to the importance of diet in the resilience and
decline of ancient societies and contributes to our understanding of
vulnerability to climate change among modern traditional farming
communities as well as industrialized nations," Ebert writes.
IMAGE: Right lateral view of the Cioclovina calvaria exhibiting a large depressed fracture.
view more
Credit: Kranoti et al, 2019
New analysis of the fossilized skull of an Upper Paleolithic man
suggests that he died a violent death, according to a study published
July 3, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by an international team from Greece, Romania and Germany led by the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany
The fossilized skull of a Paleolithic adult man, known as the
Cioclovina calvaria, was originally uncovered in a cave in South
Transylvania and is thought to be around 33,000 years old. Since its
discovery, this fossil has been extensively studied. Here, the authors
reassessed trauma on the skull--specifically a large fracture on the
right aspect of the cranium which has been disputed in the past--in
order to evaluate whether this specific fracture occurred at the time of
death or as a postmortem event.
The authors conducted experimental trauma simulations using twelve
synthetic bone spheres, testing scenarios such as falls from various
heights as well as single or double blows from rocks or bats. Along with
these simulations, the authors inspected the fossil both visually and
virtually using computed tomography technology.
The authors found there were actually two injuries at or near the
time of death: a linear fracture at the base of the skull, followed by a
depressed fracture on the right side of the cranial vault. The
simulations showed that these fractures strongly resemble the pattern of
injury resulting from consecutive blows with a bat-like object; the
positioning suggests the blow resulting in the depressed fracture came
from a face-to-face confrontation, possibly with the bat in the
perpetrator's left hand. The researchers' analysis indicates that the
two injuries were not the result of accidental injury, post-mortem
damage, or a fall alone.
While the fractures would have been fatal, only the fossilized skull
has been found so it's possible that bodily injuries leading to death
might also have been sustained. Regardless, the authors state that the
forensic evidence described in this study points to an
intentionally-caused violent death, suggesting that homicide was
practiced by early humans during the Upper Paleolithic.
The authors add: "The Upper Paleolithic was a time of increasing
cultural complexity and technological sophistication. Our work shows
that violent interpersonal behaviour and murder was also part of the
behavioural repertoire of these early modern Europeans."
An international team, led by scientists from the Max Planck
Institute for the Science of Human History and the Leon Levy Expedition,
retrieved and analyzed, for the first time, genome-wide data from
people who lived during the Bronze and Iron Age (~3,600-2,800 years ago)
in the ancient port city of Ashkelon, one of the core Philistine cities
during the Iron Age. The team found that a European derived ancestry
was introduced in Ashkelon around the time of the Philistines' estimated
arrival, suggesting that ancestors of the Philistines migrated across
the Mediterranean, reaching Ashkelon by the early Iron Age. This
European related genetic component was subsequently diluted by the local
Levantine gene pool over the succeeding centuries, suggesting intensive
admixture between local and foreign populations. These genetic results,
published in Science Advances, are a critical step toward understanding the long-disputed origins of the Philistines.
The Philistines are famous for their appearance in the Hebrew Bible
as the arch-enemies of the Israelites. However, the ancient texts tell
little about the Philistine origins other than a later memory that the
Philistines came from "Caphtor" (a Bronze Age name for Crete; Amos 9:7).
More than a century ago, Egyptologists proposed that a group called the
Peleset in texts of the late twelfth century BCE were the same as the
Biblical Philistines. The Egyptians claimed that the Peleset travelled
from the "the islands," attacking what is today Cyprus and the Turkish
and Syrian coasts, finally attempting to invade Egypt. These
hieroglyphic inscriptions were the first indication that the search for
the origins of the Philistines should be focused in the late second
millennium BCE. From 1985-2016, the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon, a
project of the Harvard Semitic Museum, took up the search for the origin
of the Philistines at Ashkelon, one of the five "Philistine" cities
according to the Hebrew Bible. Led by its founder, the late Lawrence E.
Stager, and then by Daniel M. Master, an author of the study and
director of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon, the team found
substantial changes in ways of life during the 12th century BCE which
they connected to the arrival of the Philistines. Many scholars,
however, argued that these cultural changes were merely the result of
trade or a local imitation of foreign styles and not the result of a
substantial movement of people.
This new study represents the culmination of more than thirty years
of archaeological work and of genetic research utilizing state of the
art technologies, concluding that the advent of the Philistines in the
southern Levant involved a movement of people from the west during the
Bronze to Iron Age transition. Genetic discontinuity between the Bronze and Iron Age people of Ashkelon
The researchers successfully recovered genomic data from the remains
of 10 individuals who lived in Ashkelon during the Bronze and Iron Age.
This data allowed the team to compare the DNA of the Bronze and Iron
Age people of Ashkelon to determine how they were related. The
researchers found that individuals across all time periods derived most
of their ancestry from the local Levantine gene pool, but that
individuals who lived in early Iron Age Ashkelon had a European derived
ancestral component that was not present in their Bronze Age
predecessors.
"This genetic distinction is due to European-related gene flow
introduced in Ashkelon during either the end of the Bronze Age or the
beginning of the Iron Age. This timing is in accord with estimates of
the Philistines arrival to the coast of the Levant, based on
archaeological and textual records," explains Michal Feldman of the Max
Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, leading author of the
study. "While our modelling suggests a southern European gene pool as a
plausible source, future sampling could identify more precisely the
populations introducing the European-related component to Ashkelon." Transient impact of the "European related" gene flow
In analyzing later Iron Age individuals from Ashkelon, the
researchers found that the European related component could no longer be
traced. "Within no more than two centuries, this genetic footprint
introduced during the early Iron Age is no longer detectable and seems
to be diluted by a local Levantine related gene pool," states Choongwon
Jeong of the Max Planck Institute of the Science of Human History, one
of the corresponding authors of the study.
"While, according to ancient texts, the people of Ashkelon in the
first millennium BCE remained 'Philistines' to their neighbors, the
distinctiveness of their genetic makeup was no longer clear, perhaps due
to intermarriage with Levantine groups around them," notes Master.
"This data begins to fill a temporal gap in the genetic map of the
southern Levant," explains Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute
for the Science of Human History, senior author of the study. "At the
same time, by the zoomed-in comparative analysis of the Ashkelon genetic
time transect, we find that the unique cultural features in the early
Iron Age are mirrored by a distinct genetic composition of the early
Iron Age people."
The permanent human occupation on the Tibetan Plateau was
facilitated by the introduction of cold-tolerant barley around 3600
years before present (BP), however, how barley agriculture spread onto
the Tibetan Plateau remains unknown. Now by using both genetics and
archaeological data, researchers from Kunming Institute of Zoology, CAS
and Lanzhou University revealed that the barley agriculture was mainly
brought onto the plateau by the millet farmers from northern China.
Moreover, the genetic contribution from millet farmers largely promoted
the formation of genetic landscape of the contemporary Tibetans. The
work was reported on-line in the journal National Science Review.
According to archaeological evidence, before the permanent
settlement of modern humans on the high altitudes of the plateau, the
lower altitudes in the northeast Tibetan plateau was extensively
occupied by the millet farmers during 5200 to 3600 BP. Interestingly,
towards the end of this period (since about 4000 BP), a coexistence of
indigenous millet and exotic barley-wheat cultivation appeared in the
area, making it probable that the millet farmers adopted barley
agriculture and further migrated onto the high altitudes. To test this
possibility, the team analyzed large-scale mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)
data of current Tibetans (8277 samples) and the surrounding populations
(58514 samples). Together with radiocarbon dating of cereal remains at
different elevations, they identified two haplogroups (M9a1a1c1b1a and
A11a1a), whose originations and migrations well matched the dispersal
history of millet farming from northern China. Moreover, these
components were also found in ancient DNA of human samples excavated
from Neolithic sites in which millet was the most important crop (e.g.,
Yangshao and Majiayao cultural sites), thus would represent the genetic
legacy of millet farmers that still retained in the contemporary
Tibetans.
Additionally, these millet farmers' genetic components are common
in contemporary Tibetans (20.9%), and were probably even more common
(40%-50%) in early Tibetans at about 3300 BP (when the barley farmers
had already settled on the high altitudes). Meanwhile, these components
also contributed to the genetic differentiation between contemporary
Tibetans and other East Asians. Therefore, the genetic contribution from
Neolithic millet farmers played important roles in the formation of
genetic landscape of the current Tibetans.
These results demonstrated substantial genetic components in the
Tibetans could trace their ancestry back to the Neolithic millet
farmers. The most probable explanation for this observation is that the
millet farmers adopted and brought barley agriculture to the Tibetan
Plateau and finally occupied the high altitudes permanently. This work
thus provide deeper insights into dispersal model of barley agriculture
onto the Tibetan Plateau, as well as the origin and migration history of
the Tibetans.
Elim mosaic detail, Huqoq Excavation Project. Copyright Jim Haberman. All rights reserved. Courtesy: UNC-Chapel Hill.
Copyright Jim Haberman
For nine years running, Carolina professor Jodi Magness has led a
team of research specialists and students to the ancient village of
Huqoq in Israel's Lower Galilee, where they bring to light the remains
of a Late Roman synagogue. For weeks during the summer, they unearth
history in the form of art. With each excavation season, the students
and researchers build on what little is known about the fifth century CE
Jewish community of Huqoq and the artists who crafted depictions of
biblical stories with tiny cubes of stone, or tesserae.
